More stitchery and some new fabric acquisitions

Last night it was our monthly Guild meeting - the speaker was a lady called Jenni Dobson and her talk was right up Bonnie's street - 'In praise of scraps'. As usual, like the muppet I am, I forgot to take my camera so have no photos to share but I think hers was the most entertaining and inspiring talk I've listened to since I joined the group

I was very lucky and won a prize in the raffle - this lovely fat quarter of very unusual leaf fabric has already got the creative imagination buzzing away working on a mid green and sand colour scheme for another quilt - after all I've no others in the cupboard still to finish - NOT!

We also had some fabric for sale - the local Oxfam charity shop often receives ends of rolls of fabric which they try, not always successfully, to sell for a measly 50p per yard. I suppose you don't often get people looking for fabric from the roll in charity shops.

Anyway one of our committee members offered to try and sell it at our meeting for £1 per yard - half to Oxfam and half to the group.

Most of the fabric was poly-cotton - fine for the back of say Women's Refuge charity quilts - but there were the odd few rolls of 100% cotton.

I managed to obtain over a yard of the dark blue stripe and well over three yards of the turquoise gingham - when I say the measurements they were pretty rough because the ladies were, with everyone's agreement, measuring with the old standard 'nose to finger tip' method. All this for the princely sum of £4. With £1 for the strip of raffle tickets I came home with an armful of treasure for a fiver :o)

It would appear that the charity shop gets in this sort of fabric quite regularly so who knows there may be more on the horizon.

As for stitching, my 'white elephant cover' is coming on apace - I think I'm past half way done now and really liking the result

Originally I drew the little stars with a single dot in the middle, but once I started I thought I'd rather have a pair of french knots in each star so it looked like the holes in the middle of a button.

One or two people have asked me which stitch I'm using and I have to tell you it's neither back stitch, stem stitch nor chain stitch. A few months ago, when I was looking at redwork patterns on the internet, I came across as article I've never been able to relocate which describes 'winchester stitch'. In trying to find the article again I've come across lots of other 'dictionaries of stitches' where this same stitch is called 'split stitch' or Kensington outline stitch. Basically it's a back stitch that is worked into the previous stitch instead of meeting it. Essentially you enter your needle into the stitch you've worked before thus splitting the old stitch. If it's done neatly it does give the effect of a very fine chain stitch and is wonderful for going round corners and odd shapes. It's very quick and effective.

And finally here's another little piece of nonsense that I've stitched this past week too - lilac's definitely the flavour of the moment, but this time on cream. It seems I've caught the stitchery bug!